Five talented artists, not older than 35 and working in the Netherlands, have been nominated by specialists from the world of art for de Volkskrant Beeldende Kunst Prijs (The Volkskrant Art Award) 2012: Charlotte Dumas, David Jablonowski, Tala Madani, Rory Pilgrim and Sarah van Sonsbeeck. This is the sixth edition of this Art Award, which is jointly organized by the Volkskrant (national daily newspaper), the Mondriaan Foundation and the NTR (public service television).

This year, the chairman of the jury is Jan Mulder, writer, art-lover and commentator in De Wereld Draait Door (television programme). In conjunction with jury members Lex ter Braak (director of the Jan van Eijk Academy in Maastricht), Sacha Bronwasser (art critic of de Volkskrant) and Maria Roosen (artist), a winner will be selected. In a special edition of Kunststof TV (NTR), the winner and the public’s choice will be announced. The prize, worth 10,000 euros, is funded by the Mondriaan Foundation.

The Stedelijk Museum Schiedam will display the work of the five nominees in an exhibition that is just as versatile, infectious, profound and dynamic as the world all around.

Charlotte Dumas

Police dogs and police horses were her first models, then came portraits of other animals, both wild and domesticated. Charlotte Dumas (Vlaardingen, 1977) gained international fame with her photographs: the most recent ones being of the rescue dogs that sought survivors and victims under the rubble of the Twin Towers in New York. Dumas tracked down the retired dogs here and there in the US and presented them in attentive portraits, in a modest heroic series entitled Retrieved. This work coincided with the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attack on New York and was seized upon by the press worldwide. The dog portraits offer a new way of remembering the attack: as a reflection of human dismay and of our emotional and functional dependence.

In her portraits, Dumas centres the animals in classical compositions. By means of contrasts of light and dark, she highlights the sheen, softness and texture of skin and hair. Her work is equally sensuous and expressive, partly due to the monumentality and physical proximity of the animals. Ella van Zanten, head of the RABO Art Collection, who as a scout nominated Charlotte Dumas for the VKBK Award 2012, says: ‘The profound relationship between her and the animal and the psychological portrait that she manages to establish transcends the photography of loved (domestic) animals and gives the topic a strong conceptual dimension.’

Whether it involves racehorses from Palermo and Paris, fighting dogs from an animal shelter in New York or tigers from nature reserves and from a touring circus in the US: the animals are invariably aware of Dumas’ presence. They pose and look back at us. With this, Dumas shows many ways of ‘looking’. She connects her own power of observation to that of the animals. They are just as alert as we are and, just like we subject them to our gaze, they stare at, spy upon, evaluate and watch us.

David Jablonowski

David Jablonowski (Bochum, Germany, 1982) creates sculptures with strongly contrasting materials. He exploits the antithesis between cultural history and technological development. For instance, formal memories of temples or burial monuments are visible in stacks of polystyrene resembling stone. And these creations converge with printers, scanners, copy machines or components of an offset press – equipment for the reproduction of information – reflecting primarily their own construction in this case. When Jablonowski uses a monitor, it is never the intention that the broadcast image should dominate the device, in contrast to what normally occurs. The front and back both play a role: in his work, the back of a flat screen can function as the cover of a book that falls open.

Jablonowski’s work has a retiring dramatic allure. It is as if a frenzied reproduction company has been built on the remains of sacred architecture, once built for eternity. Nevertheless, Jablonowski is not engaged in expressing social criticism. His sculptures and installations are too enigmatic for that. The devices acquire their own aesthetic power of attraction. They evoke the magic that lurks in the paradoxical phenomenon of the recurring snapshot: the multiplication of the unique manuscript.

Unicity versus reproduction, knowledge versus information, the profound versus the superficial: Jablonowski’s work scans the similarities and differences between historic and modern forms of value determination, communication and traditional forms of information transfer. Exhibition specialist Chris Driessen, director of the Fundament Foundation, who scouted Jablonowski for the VKBK Award 2012, refers to his work as ‘formally fascinating’, but also praises ‘the great philosophical and artistic themes’ in Jablonowski’s work, focusing on the question: how is meaning created and disseminated?

Tala Madani

It is primarily men that you see in the virtuoso paintings and animation films of Tala Madani (1981, Teheran). To feature in her artistic work is no sinecure. The men are invariably in conflict with one another or their bald heads are plagued by horseflies. Madani’s work is expressively painted and easily gets under your skin, even if it is amusing at first sight. The humour soon shows itself as grim and violent. A man can even be mocked by his own shadow. Toward the end of 2011 Madani made a group of works about Jinns: beings that can take possession of people.

Such – generally evil – spirits are also exerting their influence worldwide in the 21st century. Madani plays with this erratic phenomenon. She captures the illusions that we ourselves conjure up, which can suddenly appear anywhere: in the shape of a headscarf or veil for example, in the light of the current political turbulence around this topic in the Netherlands.

Tala Madani has been living in the West since she was thirteen years old. In the US, she completed Yale University School of Art, then she continued at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Her paintings and animation films have been included in the Saatchi Collection in London and were on display in the Greater New York exhibition in MoMA, PS1 (2010) and at the Biennial in Venice, in the group exhibition entitled Speech Matters in the Danish pavilion (2011). Her first Dutch retrospective opened in the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam at the end of 2011.

Madani was nominated for the Volkskrant Art Award 2012 by Domeniek Ruijters, editor-in-chief of the Metropolis M specialist journal. He refers to her work as being ‘unbelievably rich and versatile, while looking so simple’. Madani’s most important themes are cultural and sexual diversity. This material is presented in a light and straightforward way, which is deceptive as her expositions are critical, like cartoons or caricatures in the newspaper. As her scout remarks: ‘they are hard as nails and razor sharp’.

Rory Pilgrim

Rory Pilgrim (Bristol, England, 1988) gives a voice to art: the voice of the activist and also the voice of a chorister. All good things come in threes, they say, and that applies to him with the convergence of artistic, musical and political themes. He creates performances that draw art into everyday life, and put life into art. Or, as artist Erik van Lieshout, who scouted him, remarks: ‘Rory wants to change the world by developing a new, harmonious style of beauty. With him, there is a rainbow over everything.’

Van Lieshout appreciates the fact that Pilgrim’s work ‘is political and social, in an entirely individual way’. For example, Pilgrim exploits a museum room as a meeting place, conference room and meditation point, all in one. He articulates questions on individual liberties and cultural and political responsibilities. Sometimes he invites school pupils, or senior citizens or church communities to exercise their voices in a round-table discussion or in choir songs especially written for the occasion by Pilgrim himself.

Occasionally Pilgrim will cover the windows of an art institution with a personal variant of ideal advertising, in which his fine sense of colour and form becomes evident. For example, in 2011 he enlivened the façade of De Hallen in Haarlem with the sunny, yellow/orange/red artwork called Wholeheartedly: made-to-measure posters, in which the words ‘protect’ and ‘survive’ were embedded. In the year that Dutch politics imposed severe cutbacks on art and culture, this was a subtle plea for an appreciation of the arts. A choir of school pupils sang the complete text, including the fragments ‘an absent voice, a beating heart’. Under Pilgrim’s directions, their song sounded like ‘a heartbeat full of hope’.

Rory Pilgrim (Bristol, England, 1988) gives a voice to art: the voice of the activist and also the voice of a musician. All good things come in threes, they say, and that applies to him with the convergence of artistic, musical and political themes. He creates performances that draw art into everyday life, and put life into art. Or, as artist Erik van Lieshout, who scouted him, remarks: ‘Rory wants to change the world by developing a new, harmonious style of beauty. With him, there is a rainbow over everything.’

Van Lieshout appreciates the fact that Pilgrim’s work ‘is political and social, in an entirely individual way’. For example, Pilgrim exploits a museum room as a meeting place, conference room and meditation point, all in one. He articulates questions on individual liberties and cultural and political responsibilities. Sometimes he invites school pupils, or senior citizens or church communities to exercise their voices in a round-table discussion or in choir songs especially written for the occasion by Pilgrim himself.

Occasionally Pilgrim will cover the windows of an art institution with a personal variant of ideal advertising, in which his fine sense of colour and form becomes evident. For example, in 2011 he enlivened the façade of De Hallen in Haarlem with made to measure posters, collaborating with a hand crafted poster maker. Entitled 'Wholeheartedly', the bright colours of the posters turned the museum into a beacon of hope. Bearing the words 'Protect' and 'Survive', the posters made subtle reference to the severe cutbacks in the arts in The Netherlands, but more universally the economic and social difficulties across the world. Considering specifically the drastic of effects on younger generations, Pilgrim worked with school pupils from Haarlem to bring the text of the posters to life with musical chant. Including the words, 'an absent voice, a beating heart' the pupils voiced their concerns and dreams, their song becoming 'heartbeat of hope and survival’.